Will Damon Conolly run for the Assembly?

San Rafael Councilmember Damon Connolly handily won reelection on November 8 coming in first in the four-person council race. Now the question is whether he will mount a campaign for the State Assembly next June. There’s no question he’d like to make the race and that he’d be a first rate candidate, but whether he can put together a major two-county campaign is another matter.

The incumbent in the newly configured 10th District is Assemblymember Michael Allen (D-Santa Rosa).

Allen, the Assembly Assistant Majority Leader, has just taken an apartment in San Rafael and registered to vote in Marin. Under the new citizens redistricting plan he was forced to find a new district and he chose the new 10th AD. It encompasses all of Marin and much of southern and central Sonoma County including parts of Santa Rosa.

Connolly’s council colleague Marc Levine is sure to run. While Connolly mostly lines up with the San Rafael progressives, he’s acceptable to liberals. Levine is a liberal that’s acceptable to the town’s moderates.

The difficulty for Connolly will be raising funds. When Assembly Speaker John A. Perez put out the word that his protg Allen was the Speaker’s designated candidate, traditional Democratic funding sources dried up for even locally popular candidates like Connolly.

Allen, a former president of the North Bay (Sonoma-Mendocino) Labor Council, is a public employees union professional. Allen will thus get virtually 100% of the labor campaign dollars in this race. For any Democratic candidate that’s a very big deal.

Perez’s interest in the race will make retaining an experienced campaign consultant difficult for Connolly. Perez has essentially told the political consultant industry that if they work for any candidate against Allen, they are permanently off the list as acceptable consultants for his Democratic Assembly colleagues. Of course that’s really only a one-term threat. Perez is termed out in 2014. He’ll then be a mere ex-
Assemblymember and will likely find himself back in Los Angeles looking for his next gig.

To a great extent Levine’s campaign will be funded by his family and friends giving him exceptional flexibility.

Given those dynamics, I’d be surprised to see any other well-funded Democratic candidates enter the race.

Laguanitas’ Alex Easton-Brown will also be a candidate. He’ll make a bare bones run on a strict pension reform platform. As usual, no significant Republican will emerge. There are rumors that an independent could surface, but whether such a candidate could gain much traction is another question.